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51st Edition - The languages of the former Yugoslavia The Disintegration of Serbo-Croatian
Fascinated by the notion of ethnic harmony and pan-Slavic
cooperation among Southern Slavs, Ljudevit Gaj sought to bring about
the unity of the Serbo-Croatian language in the nineteenth century.
A foremost authority on the Serbo-Croatian language at the
University of Graz, Gaj, a Croat, planned to create a southern
Slavic kingdom with Serbia at the center. (Reference: http://www.ohiou.edu/~Chastain/dh/gaj.htm)
During the Socialist regime of Marshal
Josip Broz Tito, who ruled Yugoslavia from the end of World War II
(1945) until his death in 1980, all forms of nationalism were
suppressed, including linguistic nationalism. Tito's government
declared Serbo-Croatian the language of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA),
the language of diplomacy, and the “umbrella” language that
attempted to bring together diverse, and at times feuding, Slavic
ethnic groups. But by the 1980s, it was becoming increasingly
apparent that Gaj’s dream was lost, that Yugoslavism was no longer
viable, and Serbo-Croatian was no longer possible. (Reference: Language and Identity
in the Balkans, by Robert D. Greenberg). In the introduction to his book, Dr. Greenberg writes: “I attended a
reception at the Belgian Embassy in Belgrade. One distinguished guest, having
discovered that I am a budding linguist, came up to me, and asked if I would
answer a question which had long troubled him...he simply wanted to know if I
thought that Serbo-Croatian was one language or two. It was 1990, and the answer
seemed obvious to me – officially the language was still united, and mutual
intelligibility among its speakers was still possible. It was true that two
literary languages had the potential to emerge, but it was too early to
determine if this split had already occurred.” Upon returning to the region devastated by the wars in Croatia and
Bosnia-Herzegovina, eight years later, Dr. Greenberg found the linguistic
situation radically different. Within the span of a decade, the Serbo-Croatian
unified language had disintegrated into four successor languages (Bosnian,
Croatian, Serbian, Montenegrin) on a path to becoming mutually unintelligible.
The history of the Balkan region is fraught with linguistic discord, but by any
previous standard of linguistic behavior, this event was unprecedented. Languages die for many reasons - a stronger newcomer imposes their language
on an indigenous population, or an entire group of speakers disappears, or
simply decides to abandon their own language in favor of another one more that
is more popular for economic, cultural or political reasons. The demise of
Serbo-Croatian, however, does not fit any of the standard definitions of
language death. Greenberg suggests that it is possible that Serbo-Croatian is
still in the process of dying, and some time in the twenty first century it will
join other extinct languages, like Cornish. Or, that perhaps it never existed as
a living language, since there were such a large variety of urban and rural
dialects. On the other hand, many ex-Yugoslavs who live outside the Balkan refer
to their language as Serbo-Croat and universities in some countries still offer
Serbo-Croat or Serbo-Croatian language courses – Columbia University in the
United States, among them: The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language
Center, in Monterey, California - the primary foreign language school for the
U.S. Department of Defense also offers Serbo-Croatian among its many language
choices. Linguistic Nationalism in the Balkans The following map shows the Austro Hungarian Empire
within the context of current boundaries. (Reference: http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761579967/Austria-Hungary.html) Ethnic Relations
The dominant ethnic group in each half of the
Empire constituted a minority in the area which it controlled: Germans numbered
only some 36% of Cisleithania's population, and Magyars slightly under a half of
Hungary's. This linguistic nationalism was enthusiastically received by the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, who decided to cooperate in the development of a joint literary language. The principle that "people" needs its own language is emphasized in the opening statement to the "Literary Agreement" of 1850, which brought together Vuk Karadžić, the chief reformer of the Serbian language, and the leaders of the Croatian Illyrian movement. We the undersigned – well aware that one people must have one literature, and seeing with sadness how our literature is splintered, not only in its writing system, but also in its spelling have met to discuss how it might b possible to understand each other and to unite in our literature. The Agreement was based on the belief that Central Southern Slavs of the Catholic, Orthodox, and Islamic faiths, were "one people" and, by uniting with their fellow oppressed, Slavic people they would be able to preserve their rights and guarantee ethnic survival and revival. Both sides agreed that it was preferable to elevate a popular dialect to the status of literary language, instead of creating an artificial standard, and they decided to select the Eastern Herzegovina-type (Neo-Štokavian /ijekavian) dialect for the new literary language. For the Croats this was the dialect of Dubrovnic, fabled for its sixteenth century vernacular literature, that had been selected by Ljudevit Gaj, leader of the Illyrian Movement (Illyrian: South Slavic) to preserve Croatian rights within Hungary. For the Serbs, the neo-štokavian folklore idiom this was the basis that, independently, Vuk Karadžić, had established for standard Serbian (until then, educated Serbs had been using Serbian Slavic, Russian Slavic and hybrid Russian-Serbian language). The Agreement also contained the following:
The Agreement was not a binding document. Vuk and others on both sides signed it, but Gaj did not. The signatories were unable to achieve consensus on one very important point – the name of the common language. In 1861, the Croatian Sabor (Assembly) proposed Yugoslav (South Slav), but the authorities in Vienna, promoted “Serbian-Illyrian (Cyrillic)” and “Serbian-Illyrian (Latin)”, while Croat Vukovites, preferred “Croatian or Serbian”. Vuk Karadžić and, to some extent, Djura Danićić, referred to the language as “Serbian”. The name was not the only controversial issue, there were many others,
including the choice of dialect, the phonological writing system. The Vojvodina
Serbs were opposed Vuk’s standardization efforts, while Croat nationalists felt
that cooperating with Vuk was to surrender their Croatian identity. Some Croat
linguists opposed the selection of a Southern dialect as the standard and
suggested creating artificial standard that combined elements from various
dialects. Notwithstanding, in 1867, the Croatian Sabor officially endorsed the
Literary Agreement, declaring that “Every citizen is allowed t use the
Croatian or Serbian language as the official language and they can choose freely
the Latin or Cyrillic script.” (Okuka 1998:20). By the end of the nineteenth
century, French, English and German scholars outside the region had widely
accepted the notion of a unified language. (Reference: Language and Identity in
the Balkans, Robert D. Greenberg.) The Three Yugoslavias
Linguistically, an even more ambiguous Agreement was signed by Serb and Croat linguists in 1954 – the Novi Sad Agreement. This Agreement, declared a Literary Language - with two equal variants, developed around the main centers of Belgrade and Zagreb –a single language, with two pronunciations - ijekavian (Northwestern) and ekavian (Southwestern). Among other outstanding issues, the Novi Sad Agreement resolved the question of a name for the unified language: Srspkohrvatski (Serbo-Croatian), for the Eastern variant and hrvatkorspski (Croato-Serbian) for the Western variant. It also resolved the issue of an alphabet, by giving equal status to the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, and deciding that Serbian and Croatian schools would teach both. It also decided that the Serbian (Matica srpska) and the Croatian Matica hrvatska cultural societies would develop a common dictionary. (Reference: Greenberg.) The Novi Sad Agreement ushered a period of linguistic goodwill and cooperation among Serbs and Croats, but tensions resurfaced in 1967, with the publication in Serbia of a 1,000 page dictionary that the Yugoslavian Court considered so inflammatory that it ordered all remaining issues of the original printing to be incinerated. Some of the controversy was caused by the absence from this document of the term Hrvat (Croat), while Srbin (Serb) and related terms were well represented. Also, the way in which the terms četnik and partisan had been defined in this document, placed Partisans and Turks at an equal level, without sensitivity for the official tradition that surrounded the term partisan in the region. The Croatians countered with the “Declaration on the Name and Position of the Croatian Literary Language”, reasserting their right to their own literary language and rejecting the Novi Sad-inspired name Croato Serbian in favor of “Croatian Literary Language”. Marshall Tito perceived that the “Declaration” to be a threat to ethnic relations, but did not intervene until 1971, when the Croatian Spring movement threatened the unity and stability of the state. At the same time, the Yugoslav authorities elevated the Muslim Slav population to the status of a constituent people/nation of Yugoslavia. Through this action, the Yugoslav authorities created the forerunner to the post-992 Bosniac people. In general, the Novi Sad agreement failed because it did not satisfactorily resolve the controversy that surrounded the standardization of the unified language, such as the selection of a standard dialect, agreement on alphabets and writing systems and vocabulary issues. The Second
Yugoslavia The history of linguistic unification proved to be no less turbulent than that of the region. Endangered from the very beginning, Serbo Croatian did not survive the political events that led to the disintegration of the unified Yugoslav Federation in 1991. Even before the breakup of the Federation, the Croats had already amended the article in their Constitution to rename their language Croatian. In 1992, Serbs and Montenegrins followed suit, declaring Serbian the language of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. No sooner had Bosnia-Herzegovina attained international recognition in April of 1992, than their language planners began working on a separate Bosnian language. Montenegrins have not abandoned plans for a separate Montenegrin language. Competing Dialects The Central Slavic territory has been divided into three main dialects - Kajkavian, Čakavian and Štokavian. The names of all three derive from the different forms of the pronoun what in each dialect– (kaj, ča, and što/ šta, respectively). The Štokavian dialect has three sub-dialects: Ekavian, ijekavian and ikavian dialects. These are spoken over the largest geographical area and have the largest number of speakers, including Croats, Montenegrins, Muslim Slavs and Serbs.
The history of the Štokavian dialect is complicated by the
mass migrations of population resulting from the spread of the Ottoman empire in
the 14th-15th centuries. These migrations took place after the Ekavian,
Ijekavian, and Ikavian variants had been formed. Therefore, by the
time of the Literary Agreement and the Novi Sad Agreement, ethnic,
religious and dialect types had become blurred. Thus, since 1991, the four
successor languages have claimed ownership of Štokavian-ijekavian
Reference: Answers.com
(http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery;jsessionid=14czumu6y96rm?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=English+language&curtab=2222_1&sbid=lc03b) Successor Languages – How different are they? In 1991, the Democratic Party of Serbia organized a conference in Sarajevo in an effort to stop the conflict in Croatia and prevent it from spreading to Bosnia Herzegovina. A member of the Serbian Parliament opened the meeting with very tactful and optimistic remarks, and ended by informing his audience that simultaneous interpreting of the proceedings would be available in Slovene and Macedonian. At this point, the leader of the Croatian Democratic Union delegation raised his hand and requested simultaneous translation into Croatian. The request was met with laughter from the audience, but the uproar grew even louder when the delegate from Sarajevo demanded translation into Bosnian. (Reference: The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War, by Misha Glenny). Such requests may have seemed ludicrous in 1991, but at the Dayton Peace Talks, just four years later, each party requested their own translators - Serbs, Croats and Bosnians no longer understood each other. (Reference: Greenberg). Languages die for many reasons - a stronger newcomer imposes their language on an indigenous population, or an entire group of speakers disappears, or simply decides to abandon their own language in favor of another one more that is more popular for economic, cultural or political reasons. The demise of Serbo-Croatian, however, does not fit any of the standard definitions of language death. Greenberg suggests that it is possible that Serbo-Croatian is still in the process of dying, and some time in the twenty first century it will join other extinct languages, like Cornish. Or, that perhaps it never existed as a living language, since there were such a large variety of urban and rural dialects. On the other hand, Serbo-Croatian is taught in Universities around the world. (A quick in search for Serbo-Croatian in Google brought up Columbia University and the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in the U.S. ) Some Universities have renamed the language “Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian”. Many ex-Yugoslavs living outside the Balkans still refer to the language as “Serbo-Croat”. Notwithstanding, today, Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), Croats and Serbs, speak, read and write Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian, successor languages to the former Serbo-Croatian unified language. The following translations of Article 1 of the Declaration of Human Rights provides a glimpse of the differences and similarities among these languages: Declaration of Human Rights English Bosnian Bosnian
(Cyrillic script) (Bosanski)(Cyrillic) Serbian (Cyrillic)
(Srpski) Bosnian (Latin
script) (Bosanski) Serbian (Latin) (Srpski) Croatian (Hrvatski) Bosnian recognizes two scripts - Latin and Cyrillic – but, while officially accepted, the latter is seldom used as their first script by native speakers. In Language and Identity in the Balkans, Greenberg cites the following advertisement for an instructor of Bosnian. It provides a glimpse into the difficulty of correctly defining the new Bosnian language: “We are seeking to identify a “Bosniac” Instructor for an interesting assignment with a federal government agency (in this context “Bosniac” refers to the heavily colloquialized form of Serbo-Croatian used by residents of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It has been described as “Serbian with more than the usual amount of Turkish words and expressions thrown in")....The instructor will preferably be a native speaker of Bosnian from the villages or surrounding areas, who has spent considerable time in-country recently and is very familiar with current usage and the current cultural/political climate, educated and able to impart his/her knowledge and experience to a class of adult language students.” Croatian Used primarily by the Croats, the standard
Croatian language is rapidly developing as a separate language from the other
successor languages and increasingly transforming itself into a language no
longer mutually intelligible with the other languages. Serbian:
Serbian is spoken primarily in Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and by Serbs everywhere. Officially, the language recognizes two scripts: Latin and Cyrillic and two official pronunciations: Ekavian and ijekavian. (The practicality of dual alphabets continues to be questioned.) Cyrillic: А Б В Г Д Ђ Е Ж З И Ј К Л Љ М Н Њ О П
Р С Т Ћ У Ф Х Ц Ч Џ Ш Montenegrin: Four Languages or One? Greenberg suggests that “the emergence of four standards from a single dialect area is unprecedented in the sociolinguistic literature,” adding that the inherent similarities in the dialectal present a challenge to the linguists who are codifying the standards for their new languages, and this challenge is more daunting for the codifiers of the Bosnian and Montenegrin standards, because these languages cannot draw from long philological and linguistic traditions as their Croat and Serbian counterparts. Respected language assessment and accreditation organizations, such as the American Translator’s Association (ATA) in the US, and the IoL (Institute of Linguists) in the UK are also wrestling with this question: “A volunteer effort is currently underway within the Slavic Languages Division [of the ATA] to establish separate translation certifications for Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian into and from English. Each language pair is proceeding at its own pace in accordance with ATA Certification Committee guidelines (the procedure for establishing a new language pair takes at least two to three years).” (Reference: http://www.ata-divisions.org/SLD/index.htm) “For a long time the Institute offered an examination in Serbo-Croat. The IoL now sets separate exams in Serbian and Croatian (because differences are big enough and growing) and no exams in Bosnian (because Bosnia has three official languages and 'Bosnian' itself is not distinct as a language).” (Reference: http://home.clara.net/patriciatreasure/linguist_3_2002/politics.htm) The most radical on each side of the issue argue, on the one hand, that the languages are indeed separate and dissimilar and, on the other, that they are really one language. It is possible to draw examples from other languages in support of each position:
The current situation is that three separate languages have emerged: Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian, with the potential for a fourth language (Montenegrin). As localizers, we localize; i.e. we make local or orient locally (Webster Dictionary). Therefore, wherever possible, we adapt a product or message to the linguistic and cultural requirements of the targeted locale. "A locale in our industry identifies a group of people by their common language and cultural conventions; the group may or may not be in the same physical location. French-Canadians, for example, are present mainly in the province of Quebec, but there are several other groups in Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick. In our industry, the word locale has become a virtual location, more akin to the concept of culture. To wit, we name locales by language-country pairs; for example, French-Canada is one locale, while French-France is another." (Reference: http://www.translationdirectory.com/article127.htm)
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